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We are less than a week away from March Music Madness 2024. Plenty of time to get in on what will sure to be the highlight of the year for your students. We recently sat down with Claudio Elliot on her podcast Growing with Proficiency to discuss the Music Tournament. One of the key talking points is how we can use music as a way to discuss in the target language, without having to study the lyrics.
Our resource drive is growing and the one thing you won’t want to miss is the Round 1 Matchup Slideshow which has all the links you need and is the perfect thing to project if you listen and discuss in class.
A recently updated document that you’ll want to look at before next Monday is the Teacher Digital Bracket Prediction Document and Google Form, where you can enter to win prizes award to teachers who have the best score. We also offer a version that teachers can copy and send out to their classes, or new this year is a national google form for students to submit their predictions.
Don’t forget to take pictures of your classroom bracket display (Here’s a folder of materials you can use) and post them in the social media thread of our Facebook Group. A randomly selected post will win a prize. You can also help spread the word about this bracket by posting pictures on social media and tagging us, @SpanishPlans.
Still not quite sure how you can use MMM in your classroom? Read the different ways teachers implement it in into their own classes and adapt it to make it fit their schedule and needs.
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The 11th annual March Music Madness tournament is approaching and teachers are gearing up. Our MMM24 homepage has what you need. Don’t miss what students consistently call their favorite part of the year. Our 2024 bracket features 16 current songs (all from the past year) from 25 different artists, hits songs that are currently played on the radio, with over 3 BILLION streams.
New to the craze and looking for more information? Check out our new FAQ page. Any questions
Here’s all the links you need to get started: Continue reading
Next week I’ll be using the Spanish Lottery video of Justino with materials from the Comprehensible Classroom. In order to preview the story I used a Mad Libs activity, generated by ChatGPT which I fined-tuned. Students worked with a partner: they first wrote the words on a list. Then they asked their partner for their words to fill in the text. They then read the completed text to their partner.
Here’s a free copy of the activity.
You can also do it together as a class by taking suggestions from the class and then writing in their answers and reading the story together.
After different variations over the years, [FVR (Free Voluntary Reading], Lectura Libre, SSR (Silent Spanish Reading) among others] I’ve again renamed our reading time in class to ISR: Independent Spanish Reading.
To kick things off this year, we read for several days in a row to give students a chance to finish a book. We had already read 1 book together as a class to start the year (Capibara con Botas) so I started off ISR with the easiest of books that I had in my collection. When students were finished reading they submitted their name with the book they read and I created posters to hang in the hall with the book cover and the names of the students who read them:
This visual showcases how much our students are reading and students take pride in finding their name on the posters. As we continue I will add additional books that are part of our library.
You can download the ISR poster here.
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You can type the list in a quizlet set or in an excel spreadsheet and pass them out as the “answer key” for students to find the correct phrase to write underneath.
For this example, I’ve use the video “Decaf” about a cat who gets addicted to coffee.
Here is the set of terms students had to write. I made a class copy and folded it in half so students were just looking at the Spanish side at first.
Here is my El gato con cafe for notetaking worksheet for students to write on.
Happy Hispanic Heritage Month! Some ideas to keep in mind this month:
popular 10 Misconceptions about the Spanish Speaking World.It’s that time of year again…. summer break is coming to an end for me and I’ll be back in the classroom for year 17 soon. Here’s a few things we’ve been up to over the summer to help make YOUR transition back to the classroom an easier one.
With more and more teachers needed new ways to show student growth to administration these two projects are just what every teacher needs. Our first product is our Timed Writing Prompts for any language with a timed-writing sheet to count words and FOUR original storyboards. Featuring six panels of a sequenced story, students write as much as they can in 5 minutes. The best part if the Excel Spreadsheet or Google Sheet to insert student data that will calculate the amount of growth. Check the video preview on the product page for more info! This will definitely save you tons of time and impress your administration.
Our next student growth assessment features vocabulary where students write the translation for 100 common words. After ten minutes, the teacher reads the answers, and students count up the number of words they’ve identified correctly. Teachers input the data and watch the scores go up each time. Need to test specific words? No worries, the testing sheet also comes in an editable format.
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Our next bundle is a LIMITED TIME offer and you won’t find it during sale time… it’s already a huge saving of 25% off our most popular beginning of the year materials and lessons.
And lastly, this project we did at the end of last school year. Each semester my students read a Hispanic-
related novel from the library. I typically don’t have them do anything other than read, but with this easy to use digital template, I think it’s a great way for students to recommend books to their classmates and their peers to see what books are about. The template is 100% editable and be can shared digitally with students to complete for a professional printout when completed.
And if you have a FVR library, stay tuned; we have an upcoming product that you may be interested in. Make sure you are subscribed to our store to be notified when it’s posted.
And finally, our Google Slides Calendar Talk templates give you 9 different slides to choose and use to talk about the date and what interesting things take place on that date such as celebrities birthdays and “On this day in history…”. Wonderful way to use the target language to discuss something interesting.
If 16 songs and 3 weeks were too much, then maybe the Final 8 songs and a week and a half tournament is just for you. And if the timing is right, it might be a perfect way to cruise into Spring Break.
You can use this calendar as a guide to coordinate your vote with the rest of the participating classes. Have your students head to the voting page or share the direct link to poll. Note: If you participated in round 1 and your class winners were different, we encourage you to share the links with your students so they can cast their vote to help determine the national winner. You don’t need to follow our schedule as the polls remain open until April 3rd.
Download our Final 8 Bracket Labels and get the slides to use in class for free here.
Listen to a clip of all 8 songs in 2 minutes:
And checkout the youtube playlist of the final 8 songs.
How close is March 6? SOON! And so for our 10th year, we are hosting our biggest raffle yet!
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Before we get to the prizes and how to enter, here are some necessary links:
This year our top prize is our Set of 21 Spanish Speaking Countries Stamps, something that we have
never raffled off before, a $200 value. Our second prize is $50 worth of resources from SpanishPlans. Our third prize is a $25 gift card to Amazon. And finally, a $10 gift certificate to TeachersPayTeachers. We have 9 different ways to enter. Visit our rafflecopter page to enter.
Our playlists are out! You can listen to the 16 songs by the 23 artists who have been selected as finalists for the 2023 song of the year in our 10th annual March Música Madness tournament. With over 2 billion streams on Spotify and 1.5 views on YouTube these songs were chosen because:
Before the national voting begins on March 6, we suggest playing the songs in your class without bringing attention that they are part of any Locura de Marzo bracket. Play the music before class or while students are working. By the time March rolls around, they will say “I think I’ve heard that song before”. Sometimes it takes me several listens to a song before I start to really like it.
Playlists and resources after the jump:
SpanishPlans.org 